Character: Trinny

Though it best to push my updates here on my work in Bforartists with my character Trinny - instead of the gallery.

I will animate him ultimately - right now rigging him for UE4.

First things first is to create the deformer rig. After that I'll then start the relationship between the controlers, internal bone deformers and the system to make a really dynamic cartoon head that can deform hard. With this layered bone deformation system with sub-controllers, I can have general deformations with Squash and Stretch, then have lattice like control over the skin to preserve the general deformations and keep the small minute deformations. Also, no need for shapes - as they can be built with posing on the fly.

So here is an example of how I would make my eyeball squash and stretch, and still be able to look around. I have a parent bone, a cross hatch deformers with constraint offset influences to an IK look at bone, then a simple scale bone for the pupil. I might also throw in some cross hatch deformer offset controls for some extra eyeball stretching around. This rig I've already tested for UE4 from Blender/Bforartists, so it should work on this one (with minor improvements). They eyeball goes a little elastic, and deformed.. but that's the point no?!

I'm building a system that uses null controllers and stretched grid like bones arranged around deformer loops. My plan is to get exclusive bone deformations that are flexible enough to not need morph targets nor shapes - just poses. The reason I'm doing this is because I need the rig to be mostly morph free so I can then add realtime fur (that doesn't evaluate on morphs). Also - the rig will run faster with fewer drivers. Also.. I can technically build lattice like deformations that can export to a game engine (when lattices can't transfer between software).

These are just the beginning.

After I do this. I will then build the control rig, then tag the controller to the shadow rig (or deform rig).

UE4 has a 150 bone limit. This rig will only have a deformer shadow rig that exports after animation. All these bones don't export. The majority are drivers and controls. You can see everything as I build but the ultimate export of the deformer shadow rig and the animation controls will be quite minimal (with a lot of function).

Hey there.. if this works.. should we make this guy into a mascot for BFA? I mean he's a mascot for my "studio" but..I want to make the studio an official sponsor. It would be cool to have the mascot support BFA. What do you think?

The character itself is nice. But not textured from what i can see, besides the eyes. It has also a very complicated rig. On the contrary, the mesh itself is rather simple. It's imho no good example material. And to be brutally honest, in my opinion it's not cute enough for a mascot.

It will be furry a bit like a muppet, rendered in Unreal Engine (thus the need for the complicated rig). The idea is to use it in publicity, not example material. Albeit, he doesn't have any final texture/colour yet.

Concerning cuteness, the target audience would be in their mid 20's to late 30's with some in their late teens - we did have him with huuuge head and eyes and tiny body, but opted for a more adult look to create more empathy to that target audience. You think a more childlike kuwai proportions would be better for that audience? Currently our demographic is mid 20's to mid 30's male dominant, according to FB. We also opted to simple form with few or no features for a more "empathetic" approach to the audience - so stories are easier to illustrate and to have people identify with the character emotionally by emotional projection. It's harder on a more defined character (that's why villians have strong unique features). It's very typical in Anime and hero character design also in the west.

Mascot is not necessary, but it's arty, artistic, user friendly. Like Krita and their mascot - or Firefox with their fan mascots, or even Android.

How would you like a Bforartists mascot? Maybe I can get my artist to propose some new concepts and we can target to render him out with Cycles instead, or Eevee when it comes out. Could be another thread.

A mascot is not really essential I believe and the time might be better invested elsewhere, BUT, if you would record the whole process from design over modeling, texturing, rigging and animation and do some short clips to create a small tutorial series on that topic, that would definetely be worth it and create some more awareness for BfA. - I would go with cycles / eevee for the rendering though, to actually showcase the capabilities of the software the mascot should be promoting.

Sure, that would be good. I generally hate all raytracing unbiased or biased solutions due to the huge wait and massive hardware requirements to produce animations and do artistic tweaks, but I can do it.

I'll talk with my artist later this week and draw up some proposals and start a thread. I have this guy recorded mostly, but not with much intent.

What about a snail? We had it twice in the splash screens already. And the one from the second image isn't that bad made. I just don't know if it's a good idea. A snail isn't exactly cuddly :)

I would have a old horse mesh around. Maybe a unicorn would do the trick. Needs better texturing though. And the proportions are too realistic. A rigged goat is also around here. Or a wasp, or a spider or an orc. It's all pre PBR and pre sculpting material though. So it would most probably all need a big overhaul.

We can all make those things look cute and empathetic. I'll relay that to my artist once he comes to the microstudio. First things first we'll get some good silluettes, record the process of character conceptualization, then start conceptualizing a myriad of proposals.

If it is intended as a mascot to represent BfA, and the character should maybe explain things in the tutorial videos or appear next to the "tip of the day", the question should be what that character is there to communicate? - A snail is slow and slimy to me, no matter how cute it is drawn.^^ ... And for the sake of the tutorial series I beleive a humanoid character would be best, since this is the most general thing users would like to create. - I think something like the Trinny character would work if you indeed put some light blue muppet fur on it and maybe a BfA logo in its chest. - Only it should be created entirely in BfA to represent the software as a complete 3d suite.

We don't neeeeeed a mascot. It just is useful for publicity I can do for BFA and we can get a bunch of artistic tutorial materials official BFA.. and it will be arty like "Be for artists". This type of work is not hard for me and the people I work with. We aren't developing much so keeping the audience captive is now hard due to the development delays and not much to publish. Just thought it could be a good idea to keep the audience awake for potential moral support and development recruitment in the future.

Good news, we have around 5 or 6 new character proposals to vote on then develop, for a content series 100% in BFA. I'll make a new thread with them soon. I'll start a vote in Facebook too to make an interactive development thing more for artists if anything. They are cute and interesting. And blue, haha

I am this close to getting this rig going. I have been rather mellow with the way work has been the past few months, but I have been using it as fuel to move forward and make a plan - a sale campaign. This character is part of it, and also useful for the portfolio. I have been recording my work with this guy and will release some videos on him. Check back and maybe I'll have it published!

I feel I need to build rigging body parts to join together later for future characters, build rigs like Lego blocks. This is taking too long - and Autoriggers never do what I want them to really do. I imagine myself so frustrated one day that I will practically write my own autoriggers.

# The Progress

- Mouth is now fully deformable Jaw Ik is working like a charm, works with head Squash/stretch/bend and shape free *(meaning it's non-destructive on the mesh).*

- Lips are now SplineIK and also squash and stretch relatively al right. *Still missing Zip locks and Curl.*

- Cheeks inflate and have controls that work nicely Eyes have SplineIK

- Mouth has asymmetrical offset too

- Eyes can blink and right now squash and stretch relatively ok. *Offset on the eyes is still missing though.*

- Eyeballs now squash and flatten, also has auto lookat eyelid offset.

- Face now has proper squash and stretch ribs for volume preservation through bones.

# The Roadblocks

I forgot how Blender doesn't give clear definition or control of "Global" and "Local" transforms of bone constraints and hierarchy. So I had to work around many constraints setup incorrectly with "World" to new "Local" proxy constraint bones. That took some time to do - I had the whole head working; but when rotating the neck, it all broke spectacularly.

I have a dependency loop that has undo and reset lagging - with the curves controlled by the bones then bones constrained by SplineIK to the curve. This isn't a technical loop, but Blender is thinking that it is. Hopefully in 2.8 this won't be a thing.

The eye had a lot of troubles when I tried to get it squashing and stretching. Ultimately I had to try mimic the mouth.

# The Update
I have finally got the lattice system working. After some thought, I realized the null points of the rig don't need the ribs to work on weighting - so I will remove all the ribs. They were fun to build, but the normal focused bone null control is more than enough. WOO! Less work, less setting up, same flexibility.

# The Progress

- Eyes now have correct offset
- Eyes deform and areas around deform with head squash/stretch
- All weird offsets are fixed. *Just don't use CHild Of constraints, they are really a big pain in the butt*
- Eyeball proxy now offsets and displaces correctly for eye mesh
- General head shape is now minimalized to not need the internodal deformer ribs - full rib system is working fine.

I watch a Youtube video a whie back about the rigging of big buck bunny and it didn't look anywhere near as complicated, but then again I've failed dismally rigging anything in nearly 2 decades so what do I know lol

I know any request for BFA1 will probably not fly but I have a handful of request to the rigging process that could save a few seconds for later.

Rigging layout with all 3 armature related properties tab already open (or combine them or have them as sub tabs).

Lock on constraint transform space so I change one target and both change (target and source) -it is rare I use two spaces on the same constraint.

Source bone picker (not just object) or add an interactive system to select source, now select constraint, now select target - button workflow (right now it's all a submenu and hotkey entry and it won't work till you have all selected with active already. How is someone supposed to intuitively use this work flow with the triple hotkey without a tutorial!?)

Add a couple of icons here and there.

Move the bone transform orientation in edit mode to the tools panel (I use it often and having them in through two sub menus - still has me using the hotkey)

Have a "quick" parent workflow that skips the submenu. One button to parent connected and another to parent offset. No submenu.

Have the bone visibility, editing and properties automatically check selection and apply to all bones in selection after change or have the tool tips imply that with Alt you can do this or "Copy to Selected" (or move those menu entries to the properties area for ease of access for no "labeling redundency" and confusion and remove?)

Minimize, reorder and combine panel features, toggles and sliders

Better BB work flow. Currently the button is not quite there yet. (Task created)

When creating a constraint the target or source name would be in the constraint name. Things get messy quickly when bones have more than 2 of the same constraint with the same name and I have to stop to rename everything everywhere. Or have a button in constraints to auto rename.

But BFA2 will be a different beast like Blender 2.8 so... I'm not sure. I think the biggest roadblock is the Tools Shelf work flow changes and huge code changes there in general.

Rigging anywhere is always a chore, but saving seconds with intuitive work flows does make it fun. No good rig comes fully automatically (and is cross compatible) unless you are doing it for copy paste character rigs with similar humanoid dimensions... or when the whole system becomes more AI machine learning work flow reliant.

By far my favorite work flows has been Truespace for all the widgets and skin targeting to bones (and full body IK with anchors to toggle). Best weighting is Softimage. Strongest with intuitive perks on traditional rigging is still Softimage.

But it's not the time and I don't have the skill to fix these things yet... I'll be patient on BFA2 for now.

Here is something that Blender has always peeved me, is that bone IK has the wrong volume on stretch. it increases, instead of decreases. I have to do clever deformer mirror bones with transformation constraints with inverse scaling to make it work correctly. But other than that, this is relatively quick and easy muscle creation.

I have finally finished up my rig enough to start weighting. I have found and squashed a number of bugs, but in concept it is working. My only concern now is the 8 influences per vertex limit, or for fur, the full on 4 limit..

I was stuck quite a bit trying to get a good wrist and forearm twist. IK upvectors weren't cutting it. I couldn't offset (without drivers) the IK pole. Nore could I have proper rotation constraints.. it seems Euler is just.. a concept and all bone rotaiton is ultimately in Quaternian. Local also isn't really a thing, as rotations still work globally - meaning on elbow bend and shoulder bend, I was getting terrible gimbal lock and weird offsets on rotation.

This is one thing in the Blender core that I am nooo fan of. Softimage defines and reads out and controls Global and Local matrices as they are, as they should be, fully controllable, seperate, agnostic, and as they are, local according to bone/object axis origin, global to world center. In Blender there is no clear definition of one or the other. You can't control Global then Local with unique transform modes, and you can't drive one or the other properly. Things inherit Global/Local matrice control without any UI feedback nor definitive values whatsoever. You think you move in local, rotate a bone origin in local, then discover that the rotation gimbal is set to a global quaternian or euler that causes a gimbal lock.

So.. I had to work around.. and I found that nature has the solutions, and then proceeded to make a double forearm bone to create the twist. It worked. I should have done it this way since forever. So happy to now know! It also could work in other software.

Life has been more about hustling these days than doing 3D. I've been working on organizing a Halloween event, rent out rooms in my house, do design and web design, run around, assessment, be assessed - I even did a quick architectural rendering in UE4 with a new addon that will make my life of import/export infinitely faster. Life has been varied and interesting - but my Bforartists/Unreal Engine relationship still needs some love. I have learnt that no shear deformations in bones work in Unreal Engine. I have to work around it...... which is unfortunate, meaning I can't build good inherited deformations, and do it another way.

I have had a rough month this month hustling without much success, and today I sat down and started up my Trinny character rigging again. I managed to make my UE compatible eye finally. It deforms and looks around and keeps scale preservation all without a problem - with squash and stretch if I need it - to a degree. It's nice to be good at something again.

I started facial tests today, and got his eyebrows and teeth sorted. I've been going through each expression on his character sheet to try make the expressions. If they work, then I'm good.
Only thing left to do is the tongue and also.... figure out the expression limits. I am not sure I should limit the controls, or just leave it to the animator till he breaks it. I also have to make the animation controls a little more user friendly and with a good hide/show system.
I'm a little nervous, I haven't got the shadow rig working just yet and the idea is that it should all export to UE - but up till this stage I haven't tested it.

That's right.. they are animated a little robotically right now.. and also.. they float. They are floating eyebrows. I'm still not sure if I should tag the skin to the brows also, or keep them floating. What do you think?

Nice, it´s alive. - I only think the eye is filling the eye socket a bit strangely with that large gap on the side.

- But as with the eyebrows it all depends how Trinny will look in the final rendering? If you are still planning on a fur this will change the shape of the character quite a bit still. Maybe the eyebrows will also be just hair, a bit longer and in a different color than the body fur?

Yes, the eye sockets are still somewhat broken. I am working on that still.

Good pionts for the eye brows. I would like some fur, but we'll see if I can actually get the fur working in realtime in UE4. If it's fur, then it's probably a great idea for longer different colour hair! Yes!